Years ago I heard a story on the TV show “West Wing” which I never forgot it: A man was walking down the street and he fell into a hole. He tried as hard as he could to get out, but he couldn’t. So he slouched down in the bottom of the hole, discouraged and disheartened. Eventually, he saw a doctor walk by the hole, so he called out, “Hey Doc, can you help me? I have fallen in this hole and I can’t get out.” The doctor looks down in the hole, sees the man, and says, “Sure.” Then he takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, writes a prescription, throws it in the hole, and says, “Take this medicine and, if things don’t get better, give me a call next week.”
The man in the hole looks at the prescription, mutters to himself, “This doesn’t help me,” throws it aside and slumps to the ground. After a while, he sees a priest walk by the hole, so he calls out, “Hey Father, can you help me? I have fallen in this hole and I can’t get out.”
The priest looks in the hole, sees the man and says, “Sure.” He reaches into his pocket for a piece of paper, writes a prayer on it, throws the paper down in the hole and says, “Say this prayer every morning and night, and if things don’t get better, come and see me next week at the church down the street.”
The man looks at the paper, discouragingly says, “This doesn’t help me either,” throws it away and sits down in the dirt again. Sometime later, he looks up and sees his friend, Bob, walking by the hole. “Hey Bob,” he shouts. “Can you please help me? I have fallen in this hole and I can’t get out.”
Bob looks in the hole, sees his friend, and says, “I sure can!” Then he jumps in the hole.
His friend cries out, “You idiot! What did you do that for? Now we are both in this hole.”
“That’s true,” said Bob. “But I have been in this hole before, and I know that there is a way out.”
To be human in this world means that there will be times when your life seems to collapse in utter devastation. Maybe an exposed secret sin confronts you with the inescapable reality of your absolute brokenness. Or a doctor’s diagnosis forces you to face the truth of your own mortality. Our life as we used to know it is completely shattered, and there is no way out of the pit we find ourselves in. Friends may offer what they think is good advice, but their band-aid solutions can’t reach the depth of our need. Who can really help us? Who will jump into the pit we are in and rescue us? To answer that question, we turn to our final passage in the Streams in the Desert series, Isaiah 61:1-11.
The Servant Who Jumps Into the Pit
This passage opens with Someone extraordinary speaking—Someone anointed and filled with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, being anointed and filled with the Spirit only appear together when Saul and David are made king. Here the combination signals a figure greater than any earthly king. This is the Servant of Isaiah’s Songs who:
… was pierced for our transgressions, …crushed for our iniquities; …
and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
Now he speaks again:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me…. (Isaiah 61:1)
He is the Spirit-filled, God-anointed Servant—sent to proclaim Good News and make that Good News real. He is the One who jumps into the pit with us. He is the One who knows the way out.
The Rescue He Brings
Freedom (Isaiah 61:1)
But what will our rescue look like? The Servant tells us:
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
(Isaiah 61:1)
The Servant-Messiah comes to bandage together the open wounds of our broken hearts. Like a king declaring amnesty, He speaks words that set us free forever. The dark prison of sin, mortality, and spiritual blindness no longer holds us. In his light, we finally see reality as it truly is. Because of the Servant, we are fully alive and free.
Favour (Isaiah 61:2a)
And the Servant will give us more than freedom. He has been anointed and sent:
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— (Isaiah 61:2-3a)
The “year of the Lord’s favour” refers to the Year of Jubilee—a once-in-fifty years reset where those who had to sell themselves into slavery because of debts would be set free, and those who had to sell their land because of poverty would have it restored. The Year of Jubilee was God’s way of making sure his people were secure and free. The freedom he gave his people through the Exodus would not be undone by making them permanent slaves. The inheritance of land that God gave to each family when they entered the Promised Land could not be stolen away forever. By seeing each other and the land the way God did, and by restoring each other in accordance with God’s perspective, the Israelites would live in true freedom. Jubilee meant no one stayed trapped forever.
Jesus ultimately fulfills the Jubilee promise. In the synagogue in Nazareth, he read Isaiah 61 and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) As natural-born sinners, we were enemies of God by nature. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) By going to the cross, dying for our sins and rising again, Jesus has poured out God’s love and favour upon us. In him, we have new life and forgiveness for all our sins, and he makes us beloved children of God. Jesus defeated our greatest enemies—sin, death and the devil—and one day he will banish them forever.
Right now, we taste part of our salvation—full forgiveness, new life, and adoption into God’s family—incredible gifts that change everything for us. Yet a day is coming when we will receive salvation in all its fullness: resurrection, restoration, and life forever with Jesus in the new heaven and earth—a wonderful inheritance kept safe for us in heaven until we receive at the end of time. We see ourselves as Jesus does, and treasure his inheritance in our hearts, earthly sorrow will be transformed to heavenly joy. And we want to share the Good News of God’s favour with others so they also can be free.
A New Identity of Beauty and Strength (Isaiah 61:3)
The Servant not only frees and favours us—he gives us a new identity. The Servant promises:
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:3)
No longer clothed in mourning, he adorns us with beauty and celebratory clothes. There are oak trees mentioned in Isaiah 1 which withered, died, and became firewood because of sinful human pride and rebellion. Because of Jesus, that is not who we are. Our identity is centered in the God who gave us new life and planted us into the fertile ground of his freedom and favour. As we grow and mature, nourished by God’s love, favour, and forgiveness, we radiate God’s stability, strength and righteousness like magnificent oak trees. This means that when storms come, you don’t topple as easily. You respond with patience instead of panic, hope instead of despair, generosity instead of self-protection.
It’s an amazing paradox that we find throughout Isaiah and elsewhere in the Bible. As John N. Oswalt writes in his commentary on Isaiah:
“try to make ourselves mighty, and we burn ourselves up; admit ourselves helpless and doomed, and God gives us his beauty. We are made to be mirrors; when his beauty if reflected in us, we become beautiful.”[i]
A Voice You Can Trust
On May 1, 2023, a small aircraft crashed deep in the Amazon rainforest. Seven people were on board. Three died on impact. Four children—ages 13 to 11 months—vanished into the jungle.
For weeks, rescuers searched. They dropped food, water, and whistles. They found footprints, a baby bottle, used diapers. But no children.
The older siblings, raised near the jungle, knew how to survive. But they were terrified. They hid from the very people trying to save them.
Finally, rescuers recorded the children’s grandmother calling to them: “Stay in one place. Help is on the way.” They broadcast her voice through speakers lowered into the trees.
On day forty, the children were found—starved, bitten, exhausted, but alive.
What finally drew them out wasn’t the army or the supplies. It was a voice they trusted.
Step Into the Freedom Already Given
Dear friends, you can trust the voice of Jesus. He is the God-appointed, Spirit-anointed Servant who came to give you freedom, God’s favour and a new identity as a beautiful oak of righteousness. And he says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
And the challenge I leave with you today is this: Abandon every attempt to save yourself. Admit your helplessness. Embrace the identity Jesus has given you. You are beloved, you are beautiful, and you are free. And this broken and hurting world needs you to be who God created and redeemed you to be. So step into the freedom, favour, and identity Jesus has already given you—and let the world see the beauty of the One who rescued you. Amen.
[i] John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah; Chapters 40-66 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 568.
Farewell to Shadowlands 